


The Abyssal Plain

by stuffbyshelbyfics



Series: Witchy Pines [8]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-05-15 21:37:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14798426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stuffbyshelbyfics/pseuds/stuffbyshelbyfics
Summary: Ford ventures into Stan's mindscape with a mission.





	The Abyssal Plain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Inkblot9](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inkblot9/gifts).



Stanford gently stroked his brother’s thin hair, smoothing it back from his wrinkled forehead. “Do you trust me?” he asked.

Stanley chuckled drowsily. “Well, now I’m not sure if I do.”

“Stanley, please.”

Stan nodded, closing his eyes. “Yeah, I do. You do your thing, poindexter.”

Ford took several deep breaths, steadying himself. He’d been the one to bring up the idea of using his newfound skills as a witch to help patch Stan’s scrambled memories, but the thought of trying something so advanced and so intrinsically connected to his brother’s self still made him nervous. The two of them were lying slightly squished against each other in Stan’s small cot, with Ford’s left arm wrapped around Stan’s shoulders and his free hand resting carefully on his forehead. Stanley began to fall into a deep, magically aided sleep, and Ford mentally repeated the incantation used to enter a person’s mindscape, took one last deep breath - and fell into cold water.

He pulled himself to the surface, sputtering and spitting water out of his mouth. As he got his bearings, his vision adjusted to the dazzling ocean sunlight, in heavy contrast from the dimly lit cabin of the Stan o’ War II. The sun was beginning its long slide down the western sky, leaving the clouds gilded with gold as it passed. It was decidedly different from what Dipper and Mabel had told him about their foray into Stan’s mindscape - the greyscale, surrealistic Mystery Shack was nowhere in sight, but if Ford strained his vision through his dripping glasses, he could see the mist-shrouded coastline of what could be the Pacific Northwest, lying like a huge beached whale on the dark horizon. Other than that, the empty ocean surrounded him for as far as the eye could see. He tried to remember what else the kids had told him about Stan’s mindscape, and recalled that Mabel had mentioned that you could create anything you could imagine while you were inside. Acting on intuition, he visualized a complete scuba diving kit, and jolted in surprise as it appeared on his body in a bright golden flash. When it appeared functional to his satisfaction, he dipped below the waves and began to dive.

The blue world below appeared barren at first, but as he propelled himself towards the pale sea bed, life soon came into view. Huge red fish whirled in slow motion around the rocks that littered the sand, and pale pink anemones swayed in the current. Evidence of Stan’s memories, however, was not immediately obvious. It was only until he glimpsed a crack between the rocks at a particular angle that something could be seen…

He leaned closer, fascinated, and pressed his goggle lens up to the crack. Inside he saw a miniscule, cramped diorama of Stan, the kids, and himself all drinking Pitt Colas and lounging in the late evening heat, all piled on top of the damp sofa stashed on the back porch of the Mystery Shack. It was a fairly recent memory, but it was barricaded inside the rocks as if Stan had been afraid of letting anyone see it. Ford wrenched at the algae-covered stones, conjuring a crowbar when his own muscles couldn’t do the job. The rocks remained obstinately immobile, almost stubborn in their stillness.

“Come on, Stan,” he mumbled, his voice muffled by his diving regulator and the water around him. “I’m trying to help here.”

Ford shot the pile of rocks a glare, trying to remember to come back to this place later to try again, and kicked away into the ultramarine haze. Now that he had been introduced to the way things worked, he saw more and more memories as he swam along. Lying on the seabed were exquisite murals of recent events, picked out in different shades of sand, algae, and bits of shells. There was Dipper and Mabel’s birthday party, Soos’ first day as Mr. Mystery, infused with vivid colors that seemed to float above the pictures, giving them a magical quality. They seemed mostly whole, and Ford only had to brush back a few errant particles from the edges as he went along. The more damaged and distant memories would probably be present in deeper waters, Ford figured, and he kept on the course he’d set, traveling in the opposite direction of the distant coastline.

As the sun continued to slowly sink, the blue waters around him began to deepen in hue. Out of the corner of his eye, he could glimpse bioluminescent creatures of transparent tissues and nerve cords, refracting the receding evening light in simple but brilliant rainbows. Round jellyfish small enough to sit in his wide palm drifted past, trailing fine tendrils that swayed and flowed in the faint current. They were the ones Stan liked to call “scrubble bubble jellies” due to their gelatinous domed caps, and as Ford swam onwards and downwards, one brushed his dangling hand. Before he had a chance to rub the excruciating site, his vision went spotty and blackened -

And he blinked his eyes to find himself in the strangest casino he’d ever seen. Music pumped from a faraway corner, and red baize tables sat at intervals around the carpeted floor. It was weirdly empty and quiet, but as he looked around he saw Stan, surrounded by other fancily dressed people at a poker table. Before he could take in any other details, his vision went black again -

And he was back underwater, sinking slowly downwards. He shook himself off, disconcerted, and took another look at the scrubble bubble jellies. They had a slightly ethereal quality about them, as if they weren’t entirely there. The hallucination, however, had been strangely vivid. The scene had seemed more like something Stan would think of other than something his own mind would conceive, and Ford entertained the possibility that his brother had slipped out of the trance he’d put him in and had passed into REM sleep, and that the jellyfish were representing his dreams. He kept a wary distance from them, rubbing his stinging hand, and continued to kick his way through the darkening ocean.

Eventually the light became too scarce to see by, so Ford imagined himself a handheld spotlight and quickened his descent as its weight gently pulled him downwards. More structures of rock and coral soon came into view, the haunts of giant crabs and hagfishes. The occasional octopus pulled itself out sight as he neared, and as he drew closer he could see rocky frescoes of past heists and scams, of Stanley going door to door selling Stan-Vacs like the world was ending and sweet talking his way out of the police’s unwelcome attention. Huge-jawed fish the length of his leg slammed into each other over and over again, dueling for territory above friezes of Stan taking boxing lessons and escaping the crossfire of gang fights. Some were more scattered and fuzzy than their shallow-water brethren, so Ford used his magical dexterity to summon pieces of these pictures back from where they had drifted and arrange them in their proper places. More anemones dotted the ocean floor, a few closing and shrinking in on themselves as they sensed the unfamiliar light approaching. Lionfishes drifted like waterbound peacocks across the rocky seabed, their poisonous spines held aloft like maritime flags. Tempted by curiosity and by the conviction that any injuries sustained in Stan’s mindscape couldn’t be permanent, Ford went closer to one and pricked his finger on the tip of one fin. It felt fine at first, but then his finger and much of his hand was engulfed in a wave of intense pain -

_He was useless, he didn’t matter, nobody wanted him around, people just kept him company out of pity -_

Infuriated, Ford ripped the forearm-length fish away from him, summoned a spear and pinned it to the sand. He chased the other lionfishes as well, swinging his weapon wildly and somewhat ineffectively through the thick water. Left alone once again, he muttered a healing incantation and gripped his envenomated finger, the soft golden light surrounding it until the pain and swelling receded, sucking in air through his regulator in deep, controlled breaths. He’d been worried about Stan’s tendency to make self-deprecating jokes and off-handedly mention his worthlessness, but he couldn’t have imagined that the evidence of his self-hatred was this ingrained. He stalked a few more of the lionfishes, doing his best to finish them off as he continued on his journey.

The deeper he went, the more evidence there was of last summer’s catastrophic mind wipe. Past events were out of order and lacking in detail, the only sign of healing a brief streak of bright pink and a momentary feeling of warmth; Mabel’s efforts and her scrapbooking hobby had protected some memories from their fate of decay. His scuba fins stirred the detritus and debris that coated the soft sand, leaving clouds of dust in his wake as he passed. Fields of corals covered the layered rocks, luring Ford with their beckoning branches to come nearer to study them in detail. He peeked at the interior of a tube sponge, and found inside a tiny, perfect image of a slightly younger Stan, cradling newborns Dipper and Mabel, the sponge complex guarded by small, prickly crabs and shrimps. Ford gently stroked the tiny creatures, filled with a mixture of familial warmth and regret for the years of the kids’ childhood that he’d missed. All along his watery path he’d been placing protective spells around the memories he’d repaired, and he put an especially strong one here.

Ford’s oxygen tank had run out of air hours earlier. The only reason he wasn’t now feeling the symptoms of extreme oxygen deprivation was that he hadn’t been checking the levels of air in his tank, and had no idea of the predicament he’d be in if he had checked. For this same reason he also wasn’t feeling the effects of the intense water pressure present at these depths. His quest had drawn him deeper and deeper, back into the misty recesses of his brother’s youth. The water was filled with drifting marine snow, brushing against what bare skin his mask exposed and falling to the mouths and appendages of the creatures that dwelled on the bottom of the sea. As his gaze traveled along the ocean floor, short walls of mussels and clams gradually appeared in the distance. They contained wells of a mysterious substance, seemingly more dense than the water around it. Ford knew from experience on many an alien world that the substance was brine, a liquid exceeding in toxic salinity even more than the salt water that comprised the oceans. Among the dead king crabs that sat upturned with legs curled in on themselves lay depictions of Stan’s greatest failures; of losing his home to the anger of his father, of losing Ford to a portal he couldn’t comprehend, of lying in his car night after night coming up with new “business strategies”, of sitting unwanted and ignored in the wrecked Mystery Shack as Dipper and Mabel fawned over his brother. Ford swallowed some bile of his own, and covered the brine pools in a protective aura, which would prevent them from overflowing or harming the wildlife in the future. There was a troubling number of these brine pools dotting the abyssal plain.

Contrary to Ford’s expectations, the deeper he sank, the warmer the water became. Wavering columns of bubbles and hot fissures in the rocks arose from the slopes of sand and debris. The fissures’ heat never rose above a friendly warning but never let him come near, almost pushing him away from them with their incandescence. Inside their murky extents, he could glimpse foggy scenes of Stan’s world-shattering anger, the most prominent of which was Bill’s defeat the previous summer. That particular crevasse burned with a chilly blue light, and he was only able to view it from many feet above, as he couldn’t draw closer than a few meters due to the intense heat. The endless night of the abyssal plain seemed to stretch into eternity, and Ford could feel his hope for Stan’s recovery draining away. He began to wonder what he could wish to achieve here, where his own brother’s mind was more alien than any distant galaxy he cared to name. As he turned to leave, he saw a sea turtle, as pale green as a ghost and as far out of its depth as a helium balloon in these dark waters. It glided past him as silently and mysteriously as an owl, but Ford was desperate enough to recognize a ticket out of the abyss when he saw one, and hooked his six-fingered hands on the front edge of its shell. The two of them rode back through the moonlit water, Ford towing his spotlight behind him, until slowly but surely the unfamiliar rocks and scalding fissures of rage and self-loathing became the calm sea bed once more. As the moon’s distorted image faded into view, he slipped away from his carrier and fell away back towards the pale sand, and watched the turtle wing away into the darkness.

Ford switched his light off and sat down on the seafloor. Despite the protective spells he’d left around Stan’s ocean mindscape, he felt that not much progress had been made. He sighed heavily, bubbles streaming up from his regulator, and turned his light back on. Just as it occurred to him that Dipper and Mabel had never told him how to leave someone’s mindscape, the odd shadows cast by his spotlight caught his attention. Patches of the seemingly smooth and featureless sand appeared bumpy and strangely rounded in some places. He hovered closer, close enough for the small bulbous shapes to kiss his face, and pressed his eye to each tiny hole…

By the light of the moon and of his spotlight, he gazed upon miniscule pictures of himself and Stanley sitting up at the small kitchen table, sharing warm drinks and contented silences, of long video chats between them and the kids, of quiet mornings with golden sunlight shining in slanted beams through the cabin windows and the only sound being the gentle slapping of the waves against the hull. Each tiny polyp contained an image, the fields of baby corals extending into the night. Satisfied at last with the condition of Stan’s healing mindscape, he kicked up from the bottom and joined the flocks of bubbles that rose upwards, his vision fogging with every meter gained…

Stanford opened his eyes reluctantly, his eyesight turned misty by the clinging clouds of unconsciousness and by the fact that his glasses had slipped down his nose. He was back in the cabin of the Stan o’ War II, still pressed against the body of his sleeping brother. His arm hurt slightly when he moved it, cramped from the long hours spent pinned under Stanley’s broad shoulders, and he grunted with discomfort as he slid it out from between the sheets and Stan’s shirt. What could be viewed of the cloud-covered sky was a dirty brown, but one lamp was still lit in the cabin, putting forth an aura of comfort and warmth despite the coldness in the air. Ford carefully stood, trying hard not to disturb Stan, and crept back to his own cot, turning off the lamp on the way. For a few minutes there was the sleepy duet of shifting sheets as both tired old men adjusted to their beds, and then there was only the sound of slow breathing and the sighing of the waves.


End file.
